Friday, December 27, 2013

Taste Test

Taste Test by Kelly Fiore

This was an interesting book for me to read as I haven't come across a reality show in book form in a long while. That being said, the reality show is Taste Test where teenage chefs compete for a scholarship to a top chef school in Paris and $50,000. While they're competing, they also partake in classes that are food oriented but satisfy the requirements for high school/college course levels. So there's an interesting blend of competing, being on reality TV, dealing with school in all the chaos, and struggling with the people they're competing against.

Sounds like a complicated dish. Hehe (sorry not sorry.)

An amazon summary, "If you can grill it, smoke it, or fry it, Nora Henderson knows all about it. She’s been basting baby back ribs and pulling pork at her father’s barbeque joint since she was tall enough to reach the counter. When she’s accepted to Taste Test, a reality-television teen cooking competition, Nora can’t wait to leave her humble hometown behind, even if it means saying good-bye to her dad and her best friend, Billy. Once she’s on set, run-ins with her high-society roommate and the maddeningly handsome—not to mention talented—son of a famous chef, Christian Van Lorten, mean Nora must work even harder to prove herself. But as mysterious accidents plague the kitchen arena, protecting her heart from one annoyingly charming fellow contestant in particular becomes the least of her concerns. Someone is conducting real-life eliminations, and if Nora doesn’t figure out who, she could be next to get chopped for good. With romance and intrigue as delectable as the winning recipes included in the story, this debut novel will be devoured by all." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICELet's talk about Nora. Nora grew up in her Dad's BBQ joint since she was little, has been best friends with Billy since forever, and wants to be a chef. Under Billy's provoking, she enters to get a chance to appear on Taste Test, gets accepted, and is off for a semester of competition.
Nora spends the next semester making friends, losing friends as they're "eighty-six"'d out of the competition, and struggling with her backwards relationship with Christian and Joy. Well, Joy is more of a mutual hatred, but Christian is a little weird.

This book is mostly comprised of kind of a romance story, kind of a competition story, and kind of a friendship story. I don't think it accomplished any of these very successfully, but overall the effect of the three merging together was quite nice.

There is also a mystery element to the story as there is sabotage at the competition, like a sink blowing up.

To me it seemed that the story was trying to do too much at once and it really lost it's ability to emotionally grab at me. It was a semi-good read.